The best thing about Halloween, though, is that television stations and cable channels dig into their closets and dust off their SF film libraries. It's a given there will be a hefty percentage of rubbish clogging the airwaves. However, it's also a chance to catch some of the best science fiction, fantasy and horror films ever made.
American Movie Classics (AMC) led off the marathon with five days of movies starting Friday, with emphasis on Universal and Hammer films. Tarantula, Them!, The Thing from Another World, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man--the five days from Friday through Tuesday were a gourmet smorgasbord of creepy creatures and marauding monsters. Interspersed with the films were ghost stories of haunted Hollywood and nifty little gems of backstory about these venerable classics, such as the fact that The Wolf Man was made for a mere $180,000, one-tenth of the going rate for movies of the time.
Lifetime, sticking to their tradition of concentrating on reruns of TV movies, presented Stephen King's It, a movie notable more for its unerring portrait of childhood in the Sixties than its scare factor. Nevertheless, it is worth watching for the excellent performances by the child actors portraying the members of the "Loser's Club" and the over-the-top snarling of Tim Curry as Pennywise, the clown from hell.
The best way to find out what's showing is to check your local listings--and make sure you have lots of blank tapes on hand for the movies scheduled for the wee hours or work time. Among the highlights between Sunday and Spookday:
- 1:15 A.M./AMC
The Wolf Man Lon Chaney, Jr., as the tragic Larry Talbot, the ultimate example of the danger of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is the movie that established basic werewolf lore for all the films that followed, devised by screenwriter Clifford Siodmak.
- 3 A.M./Sci-Fi Channel
The Raven Roger Corman's delicious send-up of movies based on stories by Edgar Allen Poe--hence, his own work. Even the all-but-nonexistent plot is acceptable for the opportunity to watch Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre hamming it up.
- 5:30 A.M./AMC
The Invisible Man Miles of gauze and Claude Rains as the poster child for the dangers of self-medication.
- 10:15 A.M./AMC
The Thing from Another World Jim Arness as a walking veggie that bites back. "Watch the skies!"
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